HostGator hosting slow; suggestion?

HG performed a server upgrade a few weeks ago. Since then I've had intermittent problems with their hosting. Slow load times, time outs etc. It seemed to coincide with their upgrade and others have commented on it as well.

I've just got a forum on there with low traffic (5k UV PM). I've haven't made any changes in many months, yet HG say it's nothing to do with them.

Is there a site that can test not just the up time but the site speed when navigating the site? It's erratic but frequent enough to notice.

I would advise contacting them and requesting to move to a new server, or ask what the server load is for the server your shared hosting is on. Like RonnyRaygun said, there is a possibility someone else is hogging resources and causing disruptions.

They weren't very helpful last time I spoke to them. The first guy said he could clearly see the problem and informed their "server monitoring team". When I contacted them again they said they couldn't see any problem. I'll see what they say about the server move. If I were to upgrade would they just keep me on the same server or put me on a different one?

They weren't very helpful last time I spoke to them. The first guy said he could clearly see the problem and informed their "server monitoring team". When I contacted them again they said they couldn't see any problem. I'll see what they say about the server move. If I were to upgrade would they just keep me on the same server or put me on a different one?

Your server "upgrade" is most likely a downgrade since the EIG takeover. If you were to upgrade your plan, you'd most likely be on the same physical server as well.

Since you mentioned a forum, I'd also be willing to bet that your issues are MySQL related as well.

Hostgator is notorious for over selling on its servers every server has a certain amount of bandwidth and space. I have a vps with jaguar pc and I am very happy with them. Since you said the site was a forum... I would check into caching system for your site. also clear your error logs that usually gets full quickly.

Hostgator is notorious for over selling on its servers every server has a certain amount of bandwidth and space. I have a vps with jaguar pc and I am very happy with them. Since you said the site was a forum... I would check into caching system for your site. also clear your error logs that usually gets full quickly.

Not overselling ---- overloading.

"Overselling" is nothing more than resources management. All hosts "oversell".
Overloading is where they cram a box full, and performance be damned. That's horrible!

Originally Posted by Kingfish85

In response to your edit, they are 2 different companies, not related at all to my knowledge.

That's not what is being referred to here. A more accurate term would be overloaded. Overselling for reseller hosting is nothing more than calculating by resources "used" vs "allocated". Without allowing the overselling feature, you'll most likely never be able to fully use what you're paying for.

About the allocated resources, you are definitely right, but still overselling is not the same with overloaded. Thanks for making the point, anyway.

No worries. Your post was absolutely correct as far as HostGator not allowing the overselling feature to be enabled. The comments above were more so towards "HostGator" overselling/oversubscribing/overloading their servers. Typically, the majority of websites using MySQL and especially Wordpress are finding this out when their dashboards just load and load and load.

Enabling overselling for resellers isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as you have the resources available. Most are selling 500GB plans for 10 bucks...that's not going to work. With the overselling feature enabled, even with plans like ours with 20GB, that reseller cannot exceed their plan limits anyway.

So let's say you have a HostGator Aluminum reseller package which claims 50GB. If you create 10 accounts, with a package that has a limit for 5GB, your reseller plan will be at its cap...no matter if you're using all 5GB on each account or 1MB on each account.

Now, what this does is allow the host to continue to pour tons of accounts on that server because you're never going to use the resources you're paying for without being forced to upgrade.

Every web hosting is becoming greedy when they start to get popular. When they start-up, they are offering good prices even their servers are almost empty, then, they only get new signups but they stick with the same hardware so they can make a profit and get all the money money they invested back. There are a lot of costs involved in maintaining those hardware, the energy consumption, their short lifetime due to to high usage. I don't want to find an excuse for what their are doing, they should give you what they advertise.

However, if you really care about your business, the hosting is very important. Why to stick with a 10$ slow hosting, when you can get a nice VPS with 50$ that will assure you high loading speed, good performance, full control, etc. If you cannot make at least few hundred of dollars from your 5000UV forum, so you can easily pay $50 for a VPS hosting, then you should not care so much about the loading speed as you are not making good money from it. But, if you really want your forum to grow speed is important and you should go ahead and upgrade ( probably at another hosting company ).

I've used just about every major hosting provider, now I only use godaddy. For about $14, sometimes as low as $8 you can get an unlimited hosting plan...but it's worth more than that because of the world class support you get along with it. If you can get past the constant selling on their part you will be very happy with the product.

I love how hosting companies advertise shared hosting at like $7 dollars a month and they say it comes with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage. What a bunch of bull and an outright lie. Even a dedicated server at 10 terabits of bandwidth can get overloaded.

I love how hosting companies advertise shared hosting at like $7 dollars a month and they say it comes with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage. What a bunch of bull and an outright lie. Even a dedicated server at 10 terabits of bandwidth can get overloaded.

I love how hosting companies advertise shared hosting at like $7 dollars a month and they say it comes with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage. What a bunch of bull and an outright lie. Even a dedicated server at 10 terabits of bandwidth can get overloaded.

They say by unlimited they mean they do not limit or meter you on that item.

im expeeriencing the same problem, hostgator moved my website and now its so slow it hardly functions, really annoying. I know for a fact it is no the website, it's the new server, i have contacted them numerous times and they keep blaming the website, i tested the website on another host and it works fine, we just have to move it

Had the problem before. Although hostgator is a great affordable service, there are times when i feel the speed is being affected by the sheer volume of traffic it has to handle. I have since shifted to beyond hosting which works better and faster for my business.

HG seem to be passing the buck. They say it's nothing to do with the server, but it's been fine up until the upgrade. So, what are my options? If upgrading the shared plan won't work, what about a reseller, vps, or another host? The only big ones I know of are HG, Blue Host and Go Daddy.

HG seem to be passing the buck. They say it's nothing to do with the server, but it's been fine up until the upgrade. So, what are my options? If upgrading the shared plan won't work, what about a reseller, vps, or another host? The only big ones I know of are HG, Blue Host and Go Daddy.

That's the problem, "the big ones". The problem will never be on their side and even if it is your chances of them admitting it are slim to none.

Upgrading the shared plan will most likely keep you on the same server.

Shared & reseller plans are typically hosted on the same servers since they're pretty much the same thing. Reseller just allows access to a stripped down WHM version.

VPS - most likely not needed.

Some say they don't overload, some say they do. When you start to run into loading problems with small sites, especially those using MySQL, typically loading problems/slowness is due to one thing - tons of accounts packed onto a server. Remember, 99% of all the "big ones" (unlimited everything under the sun) are owned by the same parent company with the business plan of "cut costs & maximize profits) which ultimately leaves you the take the hit on performance.

When you get pissed with HostGator and jump ship over to BlueHost, or Fat Cow, or HostMonster, or any of the other 50+ brands they own.....you technically never left so it's still a win-win for them.

As I mentioned, I'd start looking at smaller companies that aren't structured around a corporate greed model.

EDIT: 99.9% of the problems that stem with this large main stream unlimited this & that hosts is a direct result of the environments being run at pretty much 95% capacity. For example:

I always went with the big ones because I couldn't tell who was a reseller. I've had some bad experiences with smaller hosts before. I honestly didn't expect such a dismissive "take it or leave it" response from HG though, so I'll have to do something.

I always went with the big ones because I couldn't tell who was a reseller. I've had some bad experiences with smaller hosts before. I honestly didn't expect such a dismissive "take it or leave it" response from HG though, so I'll have to do something.

Yea, I know what you mean. There's a difference though in a provider that's reselling hosting using a reseller plan and one leasing/colocating hardware. We lease all servers directly from datacenters which keeps hardware refreshes on them so we can focus on our core services.

Most people don't know, HostGator "was" one of the largest resellers of The Planet & SoftLayer. It makes a lot of sense to not own all of the hardware in a lot of cases as well.

Sorry to hear about the type of response you've received. That's not a good way to do business and surely not a way to treat a customer. This is however, the typical scenario of EIG, which is now the parent company. I hate to say it, but this is the direction every other web host has went that they've purchased over the years.

That's not a very constructive response. I offer a free service and don't have the funds to pay out $$$ each month for a dedicated server. Nor should I need to.

Highly doubt you need a dedicated server. Way too many people are forced/pressured into upgrading to something they really don't need. In a lot of cases, a somewhat affordable vps is going to have more power than a dedicated server for the same price range.

Most of the time, a dedicated server under say $120/mo is going to have an "i" series processor, which is a "desktop" grade processor, not a server grade. Then, you factor in storage redundancy. 1 HDD is what most come standard with, and is a single point of failure. Even RAID 1 which is 2 drives being mirrored has performance issues & still downtime should 1 drive fail.

A better host that uses at least RAID 10 in a shared/reseller environment and one that doesn't overload their servers/jam pack them with sometimes 10K websites would be the way to go.

Since I often recommend hosting to my customers and that too for self hosted videos, I would like to tell you, if you are on a shared hosting plan on HG, you should immediately think of an alternative.

Someone here, recommended Stablehost. They are fantastic.

I would also like to inform you that the plan does not matter - shared, reseller, vps or dedicated. What matters is the quality of the hosting and that a quality host does not offer unlimted space or bandwidth. There is no unlimted hard drive available yet.

Multiple Backups - We use StoreGrid for our daily backups, which all shared/reseller customers have access to restore files/databases from cPanel. We also retain onsite & offsite weekly/monthly server & account backups for disaster recovery. Should our Dallas TX location suffer a natural disaster - building destroyed, power grid goes out etc etc, we can be up & running in another location. I'd also like to note that we use LimeStone Networks as our main datacenter, which relies on the same power grid as the Dallas 911 dispatch center.

Clustered DNS - This might not be as critical to many however, we use a clustered DNS system that is replicated using multiple DNS servers (ours, not a 3rd party DNS company) through multiple, different geographical locations.

Support/Experience - myself & my 2 techs have been in the IT & web hosting industry for a combined overall 20+ years of experience. We have experience in many technologies such as Linux, Windows, Disaster Recovery, systems maintenance, networking, web development etc. In short, we do what needs to be done to ensure our customer sites are working properly without issue & within reason.

Customer Service - I feel as though we're pretty down to earth and do not have a "corporate" structure.

I don't want to go into a "pick me! pick me!" type discussion as there are a couple other great providers listed in this thread but hopefully that gives you some reassurance on my company as well. Another perk is that I'm a very active member here on this forum as well as some others.

I was the number one fan of hostgator and their services. When I first purchased hosting I went with them and they have been great until recently. I think I read they got purchased but not 100% sure but since then my websites speeds have really went down.

I also have a lot of wallpaper websites and arcade website, all the sudden I started getting emails from hostgator shutting down my sites because of high resource usages (used them for years and first time I got these warnings). They used to be great but seems like maybe getting to big for their shoes and not caring about customers anymore (just like CrapDaddy).

Recently I been using bluehost, hostnine and been testing fresh website hosting. I have to say so far hostnine and fresh website hosting give me the best speeds and support when needed. Bluehost is good but seems their cpanel gets more restricted everyday and they want extra money for features that should be free in cpanel.

I would highly recommend Fresh Website Hosting (link is in my signature). They are the same owners of FreshStoreBuilder and I been using their script since it was in beta testing and have no complaints.

I have three sites hosted with Hostgator - two of which were migrated last week. Both of those sites are now painfully slow at times. Have reported it to HG, but they don't seem very responsive to the issue - but they did confirm that others are experiencing the issue as well. Perhaps we're to assume this is the "new" shared hosting speed?

I have had exactly the same problem as the OP. I have two websites on two different servers at the Ace Data Center and sometimes I can't even logon to cPanel because it times out. I spoke with HostGator tech support and they said there was nothing they could do because the problem lies with the 3rd party data center.
Doesn't leave me with much choice but to move hosts, which is a shame because I have been with HostGator for years and used to think they were great.

I'm leaning towards MDDHosting at the moment but need to do more research. Would be grateful to hear from anyone who uses shared hosting on MDD at the moment.

I have had exactly the same problem as the OP. I have two websites on two different servers at the Ace Data Center and sometimes I can't even logon to cPanel because it times out. I spoke with HostGator tech support and they said there was nothing they could do because the problem lies with the 3rd party data center.
Doesn't leave me with much choice but to move hosts, which is a shame because I have been with HostGator for years and used to think they were great.

I'm leaning towards MDDHosting at the moment but need to do more research. Would be grateful to hear from anyone who uses shared hosting on MDD at the moment.

I don't use them since I own my own company but MDD Hosting is a reputable, great quality web host. Certainly one, as a direct competitor that I would recommend.

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